Posthuman Blues

Bodies of water play a significant role in UFO lore. Craft are seen rising from lakes and oceans; sailors observe remarkable wheels of light rotating beneath the hulls of their boats -- the aquatic equivalent to today's accounts of "buzzed" airliners.

The mystery can be traced to the dawn of recognized human society. The Sumerian Oannes myth maintains that civilization itself was a gift from beings who hailed from underwater. Before the detrimental pop-culture impact of Erich von Daniken, champion of untenable "ancient astronaut" theories, none other than Carl Sagan speculated that the Sumerian tale might represent an actual account of a meeting with nonhuman intelligence.

Of course, Sagan had visiting extraterrestrials in mind. Given the contemporary evidence for a nonhuman intelligence on this planet, the Oannes myth might instead represent contact between two very different types of terrestrials. That the Sumerians' enigmatic neighbors were interested in passing along the very concepts that would transform humans into city-dwellers is intriguing in light of Charles Fort's famous contention that we are the property of an intelligence that elects to remain unseen. Maybe, by concentrating large numbers of humans into unprecedentedly small enclaves, the human race was being made more amenable to cryptoterrestrial surveillance.

Equally engaging is the continued interest cryptoterrestrials display in human affairs. From unsolicited health check-ups to warnings of imminent ecological cataclysm, our fellow planetary residents appear deeply concerned about our plight, both as a species and, as some cases suggest, individuals. If our alleged "visitors" originate on some distant planet, this obsessive and long-lived attempt to steer the course of our psychosocial evolution certainly challenges modern thought on what "they" might be up to.

SETI theorists, for example, have cited radio communication as plausible means by which we might be contacted by extraterrestrials. Fortunately, the prospect of interstellar travel has gained a footing among mainstream scientists, challenging prevailing dogma that, for decades, confined hypothetical ETs to their home planetary systems. Some astronomers have even hazarded ways the aliens might betray their existence, from scattered microscopic artifacts to automated construction sites in the Asteroid Belt.

Despite the inexorably warming attitude toward ET visitation, mainstream thinkers still prefer the image of aliens as stealthy, clinical observers. UFOs, with their conspicuously visible antics, shatter this model. Many debunkers attempt, fallaciously, to dismiss the phenomenon precisely because it fails to conform with expectations. If ETs are cool and detached, it doesn't make immediate sense why they would have such a severe stake in our existence: if UFOs themselves seem like chancy evidence of ET visitors, face-to-face encounters with actual occupants -- who, moreover, look not unlike us -- seem exceptionally surreal.

But if we're instead dealing with indigenous beings, it's easier to understand why "aliens" might have cause for alarm. Their intervention throughout history indicates that they need us for reasons that are seldom forthcoming.





When abductees question their captors regarding their agenda, they're usually met with cryptic blurbs. For instance, Whitley Strieber writes that he was told, simply, that his tormentors had a "right" to snatch him from his bed and extract semen. (In recent years Strieber has publicly compared the infamous "rectal probe" to an electrostimulator, a device used to induce ejaculations in livestock. While the implications are frightening, it's at least easier to understand the brevity with which he depicted his abduction in 1987's "Communion." Unfortunately, the ubiquitous "rectal probe" quickly cemented itself into our cultural fabric, fueling the conviction that Strieber's assailants were dispassionate interstellar scientists with an inordinate interest in stool specimens.)

The many cases in which humans witness "hybrid" beings with human and alien traits call for a reconciliation with ancient contact mythology. If nonhumans are responsible, in part, for maintaining (or catalyzing) the human legacy, it would appear their reasons are more selfish than altruistic. Strangely, their desire for our continued survival -- if only for the sake of our genetic material -- may have played a substantial role in helping us to avoid extinction during the Cold War, when the UFO phenomenon evolved in our skies (much to the consternation of officialdom). The wave of sightings in 1947, for example, seems calculated to appeal to the collective unconscious in ways deftly explored in Carl Jung's "Flying Saucers."





Later sighting "flaps" possessed the same sense of theater, eventually leading French astrophysicist Jacques Vallee to suggest that we were in the grips of an existential control system. Well aware of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis' gnawing limitations, Vallee postulated a "multiverse" in which the controlling intelligence originated in a parallel reality. This did away with the need for ET visitors and helped explain the seeming absurdity of close encounters in the 1960s, when the "aliens" were regularly sighted miming the exploits of our own Apollo astronauts. It also offered a new way to address the folkloric theme of nonhuman contact that prevails in disparate cultures, from the Irish Faerie Faith to the Ant People of the Hopi.

According to Vallee and Fortean journalist John Keel, the UFO/contact phenomenon was necessarily duplicitous, adept at exploiting the witness' belief system in order to appear comprehensible. In Vallee's view, the UFO intelligence is quite real and manifests itself in order to ensure we conform to some inexplicable ideal -- but the "spacecraft," regardless of physical evidence, are ultimately illusions (albeit studiously crafted).

In contrast, the Indigenous Hypothesis put forth here argues that some UFOs are in fact real vehicles. But we're not under siege by anthropomorphic ETs or "goblins from hyperspace": the beings behind the curtain are eminently tangible. They insinuate themselves into our ontological context not to confuse us but to camouflage themselves. The UFO spectacle takes on the flavor of myth because it wants to be discounted. At the same time, knowing that their activities are bound to be seen at least occasionally, the occupants deliberately infuse their appearance with what we might expect of genuine extraterrestrial travelers.

It's a formidable disguise -- but it can be pierced.